An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language

An Essay towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language (London, 1668) is the best-remembered of the numerous works of John Wilkins, in which he expounds a new universal language, meant primarily to facilitate international communication among scholars, but envisioned for use by diplomats, travelers, and merchants as well. Unlike many universal language schemes of the period, it was meant merely as an auxiliary to — not a replacement of — existing "natural" languages.

A scheme for a lingua franca based on numerical values had been published by John Pell (1630); and in his 1640 work Mercury or the Secret Messenger (1640) Wilkins had mentioned the possibility of developing a trade language.